STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN — (Marketwire) — 02/14/13 —
* Ericsson provides access to 3G services to schools and a health clinic
in
the Millennium Village of Koraro, connectivity benefitting more than 55,000
people
* More than 4,000 students in two schools will have access to cloud
computing
through Connect To Learn program
* Community health workers will have access to internet connectivity for
improved supervision, monitoring, and guidance on health service delivery
Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) has provided the network infrastructure and
services to
bring voice and data communications to the Millennium Village Project (MVP)
in
Koraro located in a remote part of northern Ethiopia. With access to 3G
connectivity more than 4,000 students and their teachers at two schools
involved
in the Connect To Learn initiative will now have access to modern learning
and
teaching resources through Ericsson-s cloud-computing solution. In
addition,
community health workers in the Millennium Villages will be using mobile
phones
provided by Sony Mobile and broadband access provided by Ericsson to
deliver
life-saving health care services directly to households to collect health
information for improved monitoring.
Elaine Weidman-Grunewald, Vice President and Head of Sustainability and
Corporate Responsibility, Ericsson says: “Education is key to ending
poverty and
ensuring a better life for people. ICT can play a vital role in providing
access
to quality classroom resources for both teacher and student, and fostering
social awareness and global understanding which has become a necessity
nowadays
in secondary education.
“Many of the residents in this area rely on the community clinic for health
care, with otherwise little or no access to the most fundamental aspects of
health care. Connecting the health clinic in Koraro is one part of a new
joint
continent-wide campaign that aims to train, equip and deploy one million
community health workers throughout rural sub-Saharan Africa by the end of
2015, reaching millions of underserved people.” Weidman-Grunewald
continues.
The deployment of Ericsson-s cloud computing solution in Connect To Learn
at
Koraro, Masho Secondary School and Megab Secondary School, includes
netbooks and
wireless terminals that enable both students and teachers to access
educational
resources on the Internet, along with basic ICT skills training for
teachers.
Awash Teklehaimanot, Professor at Columbia University and Director of
Millennium
Project in Ethiopia said “the Koraro Millennium Village had limited access
to
communications technologies, however, with the support of Ericsson, the
people
in Koraro Cluster has benefited from 3G connectivity and Connect To Learn
facilities. Students in two secondary schools are connected to the rest of
the
world using Ericsson donated laptop computers, which will be critical to
advance
education in the area. Mobile phones are used by community health workers
and
health extension workers to advance community health efforts. With these
facilities and development of our staff, the Koraro cluster will serve as a
center of excellence and a model for scaling up of ICT solutions in
Ethiopia”
Though it is on the decline, still roughly 10 percent of children die
before
reaching the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2010, there were 500
maternal
deaths for every 100,000 live births. Many people suffer unnecessarily from
preventable and treatable diseases, from malaria, malnutrition and diarrhea
to
tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
In Koraro, community health workers use the Open MRS (medical record
system) and
a smartphone-based health-data management system to collect information and
report on malaria and other diseases, the number of births, and the
incidence of
malnutrition and the health status of pregnant women during household
visits.
Many of these residents would otherwise have little or no access to the
most
fundamental aspects of health care services.
In all, Ericsson has provided connectivity to Millennium Villages in 11
countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal,
Tanzania Uganda and Liberia.
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